The Ferguson Effect

This has been noted in other places at other times, but this is the most recent and better documented as far as we can tell:

• Numbers provided by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department show a downward trend, last year, in the numbers of self-initiated activity (S.I.A.)
  
  The numbers show a high last year of more than 21,000 S.I.A. in March, now down by more than half to about 7,000 in December.
  
  Chief Sam Dotson told Fox 2 News, "Police officers have an intuition. That intuition helps them to determine when to do self-initiated activity. It does reduce crime."
  
  Though Dotson warns that the drop in S.I.A. doesn`t tell the whole story. During a period in 2013, he said crime also dropped along with S.I.A. He added, "That means police officers` activities were paying dividends. They were stopping the right people. They were in the neighborhoods experiencing crime. They were doing their jobs and doing it well."
  
  One of the steepest drops in S.I.A. occurred after the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in a St. Louis suburb. Another steep drop in S.I.A. occurred after the Grand Jury decision on Nov. 24. Dotson said criminals felt empowered, while officers felt hampered by what he calls the "Ferguson Effect."
  
  S.I.A. numbers are climbing again, Dotson said.

The fourth paragraph is an interesting conundrum.

• During a period in 2013, he said crime also dropped along with S.I.A. He added, "That means police officers` activities were paying dividends. They were stopping the right people. They were in the neighborhoods experiencing crime. They were doing their jobs and doing it well."

It doesn't really mean that at all. We've heard and participated in the argument, "If you have less police, you have less crime." We take that to mean that unless the police are there to make an arrest or generate a report, society is willing to tolerate certain levels of misbehavior. You can see that in the CPD today. Rahm/McCarthy (and Daley/assorted superintendent) have made it inconvenient to report crime.

• 3-1-1? Hour long wait times and more. 
• Garage burglary? We'll just downgrade that to a Theft. 
• Evidence Technician? They'll be there when they get there, and even when they arrive, there's nothing retrievable many times. Detectives move the "X" and suspend the case. 
• Dead body tied to a chair?  Burned beyond recognition? Hole in the head and no gun around? Death Investigation.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword. People want government to solve their problems - individual problems, family problems, community problems. Then they bitch about how you work at it. So coppers learn to temper their responses and in the event of a Ferguson-type event, they learn to back off the throttle completely. Survival mode. Of course, then the old saw gets played, "Why didn't you do something back when blah blah blah? You racist police!"

The Chief is alleging that self-initiated stops dropped and so did crime because they were stopping the right people - that's pure CompStat bullshit right there. Crime dropped because people put up with it and most likely didn't report it. Then criminals get bolder and crime goes from little things like dope dealing and thefts to home invasions, rapes, murders, and it gets that much harder to shove the genie back in the bottle.

We feel we're in that sort of downward spiral right now. Discuss.